MATCHED PEARLS (29 page)

So she decided on the simple blue dress with a plain white hat and the pearls. She would wear the pearls! It was because of them that she had this confession to make. They must be present of course. And after all, only a connoisseur would recognize that they were real. Everybody wore pearl beads nowadays. To a casual observer they would look like the ordinary bead necklace that everybody wore every day.

The matter of attire settled, Constance tried to read to pass the morning away, but no book could hold her attention long. At last she tried the Testament, but it turned like a knife in her soul and tortured her. If she read any more of his Testament that day it would unnerve her for the evening. She kept coming on that “Come ye out and be separate” verse. She was glad when Frank called to her to know if she wanted to drive to the next town with himself and Dillie on an errand for Dillie’s mother.

Anything to take her mind off of the evening.

As they drove along amid the green fields with hills rolling off in the purply green distance on either side, somehow it seemed to her that the world had never been so lovely. Yet the ride did not do much toward occupying her thoughts. Dillie and Frank were eager about their own affairs and only cast her a bright word and a smile now and then, and there was the appalling evening hastening on.

They reached home again just in time for lunch and the afternoon stretched its interminable length before her, looking like a whole week to be lived through.

Then most unexpectedly a great box of flowers arrived, lovely feathery cornflowers, blue, white, shell pink, and purple, masses of them, and a card on the top with Seagrave’s name, and the words penciled, “I will call for you at seven tonight.”

He had landed!

Her cheeks grew pink and her heart beat joyously as she bent her face to touch the fairy flowers, closing her eyes against their feathery petals.

What unusual flowers he always sent! Hepaticas, forget-me-nots, and now these lacy delicate things! What a man he was! And to think that she in her indifference to finer things had reared a wall that undoubtedly would separate her from his friendship, or at least his companionship, for life!

A bright tear dimmed its way into her eyes and fell among the flowers. Then she caught her breath and set her lips. She must not give way to such thoughts or she would never be able to go through the evening.

She hurried to search out containers for her flowers, pleasing herself arranging them. A few in a slender crystal vase, scarcely more than a stem of glass, a mass in an opalescent bowl, a graceful arrangement of more of them in a gorgeous sterling silver cup that she had won in a tennis tournament. They lent themselves graciously to any vessel that offered itself, and there was such a wealth of them.

Then she took a handful upstairs to her room. She meant to wear those tonight.

As she mounted the stairs, her brother came flying down, tennis racket in hand, gave the flowers a knowing glance, half paused on the stairs and looked up after her, and then went on.

But the afternoon got itself away at last with a nap and a book and a bit of hovering over the different vases of flowers, and at last Constance could begin to get ready.

It was with an unsteady hand that she finally fastened the clasp of the pearls about her neck, dried off the stems of the lovely flowers, fastening a mass of them at her breast, and went down to dinner.

“Some baby doll,” saluted Frank comically as she entered the dining room, sweeping out her chair from the table and seating her with ceremony. “And is the lady stepping out among ’em?”

There was just a shade of uneasiness in his tone as he eyed her quizzically, glanced from the knot of flowers to the flowers on the table and then back again.

Constance’s cheeks flamed scarlet in spite of the fact that she wore no makeup, but she only smiled placidly and ignored his question.

“She looks very pretty!” said Grandmother, who had attained to staying down to dinner for the last two or three days. “I like to see her in that little blue gown. It looks like her eyes. And I’m glad you’re wearing the pearls, Constance.”

Constance wondered with a pang at her heart whether she would ever be willing to wear them again after tonight, but she managed to keep her smile lighted and to get through that dinner somehow, although she was conscious of her brother’s eyes continually upon her, conscious also that he studied her flowers from time to time.

Dinner dragged slowly through to the dessert, Constance managing to keep up a pretty good show of eating, and then when she had taken but one small taste of the delectable Spanish cream that was placed before her, she heard the taxi drive up to the door.

She caught her breath slightly and said hastily, “Mother, I’ll have to ask you to excuse me. I didn’t know it was so late. I’m going into town to a meeting.”

Frank caught a glimpse of the taxi, kept his keen glance out of the window for a second till he saw who was coming up the walk, and then a twinkle came into his merry eyes.

“Oh yeah?” he said to his sister’s vanishing back and went on comfortably eating his dessert.

Constance was downstairs again with her hat on, ready to go almost as soon as Seagrave entered. Indeed he was barely seated in the dim, cool living room lighted only by tall candles on the wide, old-fashioned, white marble mantel when she stepped into the room. He came forward eagerly and took her hand, took both hands in his two, and stood looking down upon her throat, and his hands clasped hers with a glad warm pressure that sent the blood thrilling through her and filled her with an ecstasy that almost frightened her. She mustn’t, oh she mustn’t feel this way about him. It would unnerve her.

Then he spoke, and his words went thrilling down into her soul with that same wonderful ecstasy again.

“Oh, I am glad to see you again!” There was a fervency in his tone that brought back all the dreams of him she had dared to harbor.

She went with him down the flower-bordered walk to the taxi, but every time she dared to lift her eyes, there were his eyes looking into hers and there was that glad thrill again.

He put her into the taxi, and she had one glimpse of that fiendish young brother of hers standing on the dining room porch gazing after her, waving a saucy hand for farewell and executing a clog dance for the benefit of any pedestrians who might be passing.

And Constance sat there smiling and tongue-tied! Constance, who was always so easy in her manner, always so ready with a cheerful word, could think of nothing whatever to say!

But it did not seem to matter.

Seagrave took his place beside her and reaching out possessed himself of her hand once more. Not as most casual free and easy young men hold hands. Rather as if it were something for which he had come a long way and waited eagerly. He looked down into her eyes and said again, “I am glad to see you!”

And again came that wonderful flood of joy in her soul, that ecstasy like to nothing she had ever experienced before. Did it mean that she had fallen in love, Constance Courtland fallen in love with a man who could never even respect her, let alone love her? Her fingers trembled in his and he released them with a lingering pressure.

“Say, aren’t you the least little bit glad to see me?” he asked wistfully.

Constance, trying to summon her manner of the world and say something bright and flippant, couldn’t think of a thing and blundered out fervently, “Oh, I am!” and then retired into mortified shyness again. What was the matter with her? She felt as if she were going to burst into tears. She gave him a radiant smile, her eyes growing starry with looking into his, because she could not take her gaze away. His eyes held hers.

Then all too soon they were at the station. It hadn’t seemed possible to have gone those five blocks so swiftly.

He left her an instant to get the tickets, and she stood in a daze, weak with happiness. Then the train was coming and there were other people about. She noticed with keen delight the purple and gold of the sunset sky, the dash of coral against a pale green field, the flecks of gold fading into a violet depth. He stood beside her, their eyes met, and he seemed to read her thought about the sunset.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” he assented with a fleeting glance toward the panorama of the sky. Then the train swept up and shut off their vision.

The lights in the long, narrow world of the train shut off the glory of the sky, and there were people about whom Constance knew, people who recognized Seagrave and spoke. Formality descended upon them as they sat down. That brief moment alone in the taxi seemed at once a dream that had fled, too exquisite for the garish light of an evening train.

Yet still she had that sense of being waited upon, guided, protected, cared for as none of her other young escorts had ever seemed to do. That feeling of entering into an adventure of joy.

There could be no quiet personal questions here, no looking deep into eyes to search for something that words dare not got after. There were other curious eyes about, wondering who was this good-looking stranger with that air of foreign travel about him. Furtive glances were cast toward them. There was Evelyn Earle three seats back across the aisle. Constance could see her eager glances reflected in the glass of her window.

They kept to conventional talk that anyone might have heard. Their eyes sought out the window again as the town fled past and the open country gave another view of the dying sunset sky, wide and wonderful. But she was intensely conscious of Seagrave sitting there beside her, of the strength in every line of his face, of his courtesy, of his evident gladness to be with her, conscious of their shoulders touching as he leaned forward to raise her window a few inches higher. She wished that the way into the city were twice as long. She wanted to get her breath, find her bearings, get used to the delight of having him near. Oh, how was she ever to go through the program she had planned? But she would first have this little time to remember before she shattered her dream.

So the minutes of the ride flew, and all too soon they were in the big city station, then rushing along in another taxi for there were but five minutes before that meeting would begin and he must not be late.

The city taxi was a noisy one. They could not talk much. He did not take her hand again, but he helped her from the taxi and up the church steps as if she were something infinitely precious, not just a girl whom he was taking out somewhere. There was something about him that made him different from all other men. She had thought that it must have been an illusion that would be dispelled when he came back, but it was there again, a charm, a fascination. Oh, it would have been better for her if he had never returned! She would have forgotten him after a while and dropped back into her world where she belonged and where she had always been perfectly contented until he came!

But she shivered a little inwardly and realized that she did not want to drop back there now, would never be contented there again as she had been.

Now they were in the great church, rapidly filling to capacity. Hot weather, midsummer, and yet a vast church
full
!

He seemed to know just where to place her most comfortably, and people around looked at him, stirred and whispered, and looked at her. They seemed to know Seagrave, and a young man came down the aisle to welcome him. An older, gray-haired minister arose from a pulpit chair and came with outstretched hand to greet him. Suddenly Seagrave was no more an obscure shabby stranger whom she had picked up at an Easter communion table. He was a man of commanding presence with many friends who were overjoyed to see him. She noticed the stir all over the church as he took his seat in the tall velvet-cushioned chair at the left of the old minister and bowed his head for a moment in prayer. And at once that action of bowing his head on his hand seemed to set him apart from her. She shrank away into herself with an infinite pain in her heart. And now he was the man on the hillside talking of God among the flowers!

The singing amazed her. So many bright young voices like jewels flashing into sound, such volume and sweetness, such power and strength and sincerity in song. She had never heard a great audience like that singing as unto the Lord, singing from the heart. College choruses, even choirs of trained voices, could not sing like that. It was different. They were singing as if they meant every word. Offering real praise to God. She was tremendously impressed with it.

The other men who took part seemed so in earnest, too. The prayer by the old minister, sweet and tender, the scripture reading by the younger man read so impressively. Everything seemed a part of a new environment, a world she did not know, a world that she looked at wistfully as the service proceeded.

Then came Seagrave’s address.

And now she was transported to the hillside as she listened to his talk. He was telling how sin began in heaven, with Lucifer that bright, perfect angel, and then went on to the Garden of Eden, how we as children of Adam came to be partakers of sin and its consequence, death. Constance sat and saw herself an abject sinner more clearly than she had ever seen it before.

But now her sin was not just merely an act of one bright Sabbath morning, the taking of false vows upon lips, not just the hypocrisy she had been planning to confess to the speaker; it was something infinitely deeper and graver, more terrible than anything she had conceived of before. Something that merited a spiritual death.

She saw herself scarred and spoiled with sin, and then she was made to see how the Lord Jesus with infinite love had taken that loathsome sin upon Himself and borne its punishment that she might go free!

Before Seagrave was finished, the tears were on Constance’s face, and she was so absorbed she did not know it. Oh, more than anything else in life she longed to be at peace with that Savior who had died for her. During Seagrave’s closing prayer wherein he asked if there was even one soul in the audience who had not accepted that great salvation that was bought on the cross by the precious blood of Christ, that God would grant that that one might take Him now and go out of the house a saved soul, her heart cried out wistfully, “Oh, God, I do!”